Текст книги "Boy in the Water"

Автор книги: Stephen Dobyns

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Текущая страница: 15 (всего у книги 29 страниц)

Kate had turned to face him. “But that’s not true. You were full of grief.”

“At times part of me still feels glad that he’s dead. I can’t forgive myself for that.”

“Kate, come here a minute.” Alice was calling to her. Jessica had gotten to her feet. Alice held her arm and Jessica was trying to pull free. They stood by the couch, staggering a little. Kate hurried through the French windows as Hawthorne watched.

The two women made Jessica lie back down on the couch. Hawthorne could barely make out their voices. Alice again covered her with a blanket as Kate stroked her hair.

Hawthorne looked up at the windows above him. They were empty but he still had the sense that something was there.

Then, gradually, a shape materialized in a third-floor window—the dark coat, white hair, and thin white beard outlining the jaw. Ambrose Stark again stared down at him. But this time it was different. A great malicious smirk distorted the lower half of his face. The lips were bright red. Hawthorne dug his fingernails into his palms. He stared back at the specter above him, forcing himself not to turn away. He told himself it was a portrait that someone was holding up at the window. But that grin—surely that wasn’t on any portrait. Stark’s eyes were bright with malevolent humor.

“What are you staring at?” Kate was coming back out to the terrace.

Hawthorne looked up toward the third floor. The image of Ambrose Stark was gone. He tried to calm his breathing. “Nothing,” he said.

“You look awful.” Kate joined him, then looked up at the empty windows.

“It’s nothing. How’s Jessica?”

“She’s better. Alice will take her over to the infirmary. What did you see up there?”

“Nothing. Just shadows.”

“How spooky those gargoyles look in the moonlight.”

“Yes,” said Hawthorne.

Alice joined them on the terrace with Jessica, who had a blanket wrapped around her shoulders.

“When you walked over here,” Hawthorne asked Alice, “did you see anyone?”

“I don’t think so. Well, I think I saw the night watchman.”

“Think?” said Hawthorne.

“I didn’t see his face and he wasn’t nearby.”

Then, strangely, came the liquid notes of a clarinet. They all stood unmoving, struck by the oddness of hearing the single instrument.

“Do you hear that?” asked Hawthorne, almost fearing that they didn’t.

“Of course,” said Kate. “How pretty it is.”

It was a jazz tune of almost unbearable sweetness. The music seemed to be coming from someplace above them.

Jessica raised her head. “I could dance to this,” she said. “Really, let me try.”

Alice gripped the girl’s arm to keep her from throwing off the blanket. “What is it?” she asked. “I know I’ve heard that song before.”

Hawthorne was afraid he wouldn’t be able to keep his voice steady. “Someone is playing ‘Satin Doll,’” he said.

Seven

Detective Leo Flynn was sucking on a big Dominican cigar, inhaling so deeply that he could feel the smoke banging against his lungs’ air sacs and infundibula—as the medical examiner liked to say. The smoke felt good. Even the fact that it was bad for him felt good. Flynn was sitting on the bench of a picnic table behind a small house on the outskirts of Portsmouth. It was early Monday afternoon and raining but Flynn was sitting under an umbrella poked up through a round hole in the redwood table, and only a few drops blew against his face. The umbrella had green and white stripes. Through an L-shaped tear in one green panel a stream of water cascaded into a blue coffee cup with the words “Irving’s Caddy Shack” in white letters around the side. Seated across from Flynn, Irving Porter, a detective with the Portsmouth police department and the owner of the house, also sucked on a cigar. In fact, the cigars had come from Porter and the backyard was the only place where Porter’s wife would let him smoke. She didn’t even like him smoking in the garage because she said the smoke snuck into the cars. Flynn didn’t know anything about that. He was glad to have a good cigar, even though it was cold and the trees were bare. And he liked Porter, who was a man about his own age and who shared his own bad habits.

Beyond that, they were talking about floaters and bodies that washed up on shore, because Porter had a body that had been tagged a simple drowning till Flynn nagged and nagged, calling twice a day from Boston—a car mechanic named Mike Ritchie who’d been pulled out of the bay in June. So Porter had the body exhumed and it turned out the guy had been killed just like Buddy Roussel and Sal Procopio: an ice pick jammed into the brain. By now Flynn had no doubt he was looking for a Canuck named Frank, a guy in his late twenties with dark brown hair and a thin face like somebody had given it a squeeze. And Frank was a joker, or at least he told jokes. Flynn even had one repeated to him. What’s the sign say over the urinals in the Canuck bar? Please don’t eat the big mints.

“Sure you don’t want a Bud?” asked Porter, blowing a cloud of smoke up into the umbrella.

“Too early for me. I’d hafta take a nap later. I’ll come back after I talk to a couple of people.”

“You want lunch?” Porter was wearing a heavy overcoat and a red hunting cap with the flaps pulled down over his ears, which made him look like an old hound.

“The cigar’s enough.”

“You ever smoke any Cubans?” Porter’s voice had grown wistful.

“Sometimes. I mean, if they get confiscated.”

“Never see any Cubans up here. Had one in Mexico once. Least they said it was a Cuban.” Porter poked at the ash on his cigar with a fingernail. “You know, I never felt good about Ritchie turning up in the bay. The guy didn’t fish, didn’t swim. I must of asked myself a thousand times what he was doing there.”

“Now you know.”

“Fuckin’ ice pick—only an autopsy would pick it up after that time in the water. I figure the tide carried him a ways. Shit, he could of been dumped off a dock right here in town. My kid brother was in high school with him. Even went to his funeral.”

“What kind of guy was he?”

“Ritchie? Shortcuts, he was a great believer in shortcuts. It never works.”

“Quick money,” said Flynn. Then he thought, What the fuck do I know about it?

“Ritchie wasn’t greedy. He was just trying to get by. But he was sloppy, drank too much, made a lot of mistakes. He kept trying to figure the angle, like the right number, the right piece of information would solve his problems. I figure somebody got tired of dealing with him and decided to clear the decks. A guy like Ritchie, who drinks like he did, you can’t trust his mouth.”

“Why didn’t you do an autopsy back in June?”

Porter looked off across his wet backyard as if unhappy with the question. “No marks. No sign of foul play. He could have been drunk and taken a tumble. And maybe we had a full plate at the time, I don’t recall.”

Flynn sucked on his cigar and looked out at the wet brown grass. It wasn’t much of a yard except for the picnic table. A seagull was flapping along above the rooflines. Flynn watched it for a moment and wondered what it was like to have no thoughts, no morality, no worries, just belly rumblings.

Flynn pushed himself to his feet. His head bumped the umbrella and a thin stream of water trickled down his neck, causing him to bite deeply into the cigar. Then he took it out of his mouth and spat into the dead grass.

“I’ll go talk to the girlfriend,” said Flynn. “Thanks for the smoke.”

“Not too many people to share it with anymore. The wife won’t even let me smoke in the car. I mean regular cigarettes. Filters, even. Makes me feel like a crook.”

Flynn walked around the side of the house. Pausing, he bent over to pick up a twig, wiped the twig on the sleeve of his raincoat, and popped off the smoldering tip of the cigar. There was almost enough left to last him down to Boston that afternoon. The department’s unmarked Dodge was parked in Porter’s driveway. Flynn unlocked the door, started it up, then drove across town.

The woman’s name was Letta Smothers and she worked afternoons at Shaw’s supermarket as a cashier. She was single with two kids, neither of whom were Ritchie’s. Irving had drawn him a map to where she lived, but still Flynn missed the apartment twice and had to double back. He kept thinking of what he knew about Frank the Ice Pick Man. Not a lot. On the other hand, everything he knew was in the computer and Flynn had no doubt that Frank’s full name would turn up in Manchester or Concord. Surely the guy had a record and when Flynn popped in one or two more pieces of information—even Frank’s shoe size, for crying out loud—then the whole story would fall into his lap. Chapter and verse.

Letta Smothers’s apartment house was one of those buildings that Flynn called pregentrified. The developers hadn’t got their hooks into it yet. It was a rectangular three-story building from the mid-nineteenth century, with flaking white paint. Rusted tricycles formed an obstacle course up the front steps. The door was unlocked and the buzzer system was broken. The woman’s apartment was on the third floor. A dump like this wouldn’t have an elevator and Leo Flynn wouldn’t have trusted it anyway. By the time he reached the third-floor landing, he was out of breath. The hall looked like it hadn’t been swept since Vietnam. Flynn found the woman’s door and knocked.

Letta Smothers was a big, blowsy woman with multicolored hair—blond streaks, auburn streaks, and gray roots. She wore blue jeans that were too small for her and a sweatshirt that was too big. A cigarette was stuck in the corner of her mouth.

“I don’t normally like cops,” she told Flynn, leaning in her doorway, “but seeing it’s about Ritchie, it’s okay.” She pronounced the name “Witchie.”

“I appreciate that,” said Leo Flynn. Over the woman’s shoulder, he could see some tattered furniture and two hefty preschoolers watching cartoons on television. As Flynn glanced at the TV, a black cartoon cat got blown to smithereens.

“Didn’t make any sense for Ritchie to be out in the bay anyway,” Letta said. “He hated water. I even had to tell him to wash regular. He said water was for plants and fish.”

“I’m more curious about this friend of his—Frank something.”

“They weren’t friends, not like real friends.” Letta dropped the cigarette on the floor of the hall and ground it out with her slipper, which was fluffy and orange. “Frank just showed up one day. I don’t think Ritchie knew him before. They had some business deal—I don’t know what it was unless it was car parts. You know, buying and selling. You want to come in and sit on the couch?”

Flynn again looked at the television. Now a hyenalike creature was getting blown up—turning into a mass of stars.

“That’s okay. It’s probably more private here in the hall,” said Flynn. “Can you tell me anything about Frank?”

“Not much. He looked kind of strange, with this thin face all squeezed together like it had gotten caught in a press. He had a lot of energy, always moving. More’n once I had to tell him to take a load off his feet just to keep him from walking back and forth in front of the TV. And he liked jokes, he knew lots of jokes. He couldn’t shut up with them.”

“You remember any?”

“You hear the one about the queer nail? Laid in the road and blew a tire.”

Flynn nodded. “Any others?”

“You know what you get when you cross a donkey with an onion? A piece of ass that makes your eyes water.”

“Any about Canucks?”

“You know what you call four Canucks in a Mercedes? Grand theft auto.”

“He must have been a lot of fun.”

Letta Smothers scratched her hair, then looked at her fingernails. “I don’t know, it got a little tiresome. Even Ritchie got sick of it, and he liked jokes. Poor Ritchie. And I had to tell Frank to watch his mouth in front of the kids. Like he couldn’t shut up.”

“This guy have any good points?”

A dreamy expression came over Letta’s wide face. “Bread. He’d make this fantastic bread. Muffins, cookies, cakes. Bread with fruit in it. Bread with chocolate chips. He liked doing it. Sometimes I thought he didn’t come over here to see Ritchie and me. He came to use the oven. He’d done baking in a vocational school someplace. It was a real gift.”

–

Jim Hawthorne got the call at six-thirty Tuesday morning. Clifford Evings was dead. Hawthorne had been shaving, and as he listened to the nurse’s voice he got shaving cream on the telephone’s black receiver. Alice spoke calmly but with a slight tremor. A breeze from the open bedroom window blew across Hawthorne’s bare skin as he stood in the living room dressed only in his pajama pants.

“The body’s cool. He must have died in the night.”

“Who else have you called?”

“The doctor, the Brewster police, the state police.”

“Why the police?”

“There’s an empty bottle of pills on the night table.”

“I’ll be right over.”

Hanging up, Hawthorne returned to the bathroom. The tile floor was cold on his bare feet. A faint gray light came in through the window. He finished shaving, then looked at his face in the mirror—his tired eyes, his drawn expression, his wet and uncombed hair. He took no comfort in what he saw, and in the lines on his forehead and at the corners of his eyes he felt he was witnessing the effect of his horror from the week before. His face looked tighter, bonier. Even as he stared at his reflection it seemed he could hear the notes of “Satin Doll.” Then he went to get dressed.

Clifford Evings was dead. Hawthorne would hear his nasal whine no more. Evings’s thinness and great height, his bald head and ragged cardigan sweater would never again be seen making their way through the halls of Bishop’s Hill. Hawthorne felt a thickness inside him. Wasn’t there more he could have done? He remembered the red scratches that Evings had sometimes left on his scalp as if they were symbols of the greatest fragility. He regretted that he hadn’t liked him more. Yet everything had been set for Evings to take a leave. The board had agreed. Money had been provided. Hamilton Burke himself had driven up to the school the previous day to assure Evings that all was well. He didn’t have to be back until classes resumed in January, almost two months. Instead, he had killed himself.

There was frost on the grass when Hawthorne let himself out the French windows onto the terrace behind Adams Hall. The sun had yet to crest the eastern mountains and Hawthorne couldn’t tell if the day would be cloudy or clear. The sky and ground had an equal grayness; the distant trees formed a leaden curtain. Crows were calling. Hawthorne hurried toward the row of dormitory cottages. Shepherd, where Evings had his studio apartment, was the third, and all the lights were burning. Half a dozen kids in puffy down jackets stood on the grass looking up at Evings’s windows. Scott McKinnon was one of them. He took a few steps toward Hawthorne. “Old Evings scragged himself,” he said. He looked both pleased and horrified. His blue baseball cap was turned around so the bill pointed down his back.

Hawthorne couldn’t bring himself to answer. Five boys and two girls looked at him with an excitement that seemed devoid of grief. Yet there was distress nonetheless. Hawthorne hurried past them up the front steps and opened the door. To the right of the hallway was the student lounge, where about twelve junior and senior boys were talking quietly. They looked at Hawthorne as if he might do something—erase their sadness or return Evings to life. Two were weeping.

Hawthorne greeted them, then used the house phone to call the kitchen. Breakfast wouldn’t be served for another forty-five minutes, but he didn’t want the boys to remain in the dorm. Gaudette answered and Hawthorne explained what had happened.

“I want to send about a dozen kids over to the dining hall. Give them some hot chocolate and juice or something, maybe get them to help you set up. Don’t let Frank tell them any jokes.”

“That’s fine. I got some muffins.”

Hawthorne told the boys to get their coats and go over to the kitchen. He tried to think what else he could do, but only the impossible came to mind—like removing those parts of their memories that hurt them.

Upstairs he found Alice Beech and Bobby in Evings’s apartment, a long room with a sloping ceiling and two dormers under the roof. Piles of books lined the wall across from the windows. Evings lay on his back in his single bed, fully dressed but with his shoes off. A pair of polished black wing tips stood side by side on the floor by the foot of the bed. Evings wore threadbare black socks and Hawthorne could see his long toes through the fabric. He wore a dark suit, white shirt, and blue striped tie, as if he had already dressed himself for his funeral and meant to cause as little trouble as possible. His hands were folded across his stomach. His eyes were slightly open, as if he were furtively watching the people in the room. There was a faint gleam from his teeth. The air smelled sweet. Hawthorne thought the smell was coming from Evings, then he realized that Evings had been burning incense.

Both Alice Beech and Bobby were wearing bathrobes. Bobby’s eyes were red from weeping. He kept rubbing them. Alice and Bobby stood at the foot of the bed and watched Hawthorne.

“Who found him?” asked Hawthorne.

“His door was open and the light was on,” said Bobby. Mixed with his grief, Hawthorne also heard anger. “A student who was going to the john saw him. He tried to wake him to see if he was all right. That was a little after six.”

“I’m sure he’s been dead four or five hours,” said Alice.

As Hawthorne looked at the dead man, he grew aware of several students in the hall behind him. He turned and shut the door. But he felt sorry for them. Even if they hadn’t liked Evings, they had spent a substantial amount of time in his company. Evings had become a three-dimensional presence and surely they felt guilt, as if by acting differently they could have kept him alive.

Hawthorne was increasingly aware of Bobby’s anger. Alice took his arm, trying to calm him.

“I don’t care,” said Bobby, shrugging her off. “I don’t care what he thinks.”

“What are you talking about?” asked Hawthorne. It was hot in the room and he unbuttoned his overcoat.

“I’m talking about what you promised,” said Bobby. “You said everything would be all right, that he’d be safe. Is this what you meant, damn you? He’s dead. Is that what you call safe?”

“Bobby, stop it,” said the nurse. There were tears in her eyes as well.

Hawthorne put a hand out toward Bobby but the other man brushed it aside. “The leave had been approved,” said Hawthorne. “I don’t know what went wrong.”

Bobby pulled his blue terry cloth robe around himself tighter. “He called me last night, did you know that? He said everything was over. And I misunderstood. He sounded happy. Or relieved, he sounded relieved. I thought he was glad he’d be going. Instead he was glad he was going to die. I even asked if he wanted me to come over and he said no, no, he wanted some time by himself. He meant to kill himself even then. Damn it, what did you do to him?”

There was a rapping at the door, and Chief Moulton entered, breathing heavily from his climb up the stairs. The Brewster policeman was wearing khaki pants, with a dark green jacket and hunting boots. In one hand he held a cap and in the other a blue bandanna with which he wiped his forehead then shoved in his back pocket. His cracked leather holster flopped against his hip as he walked.

“What a shame,” he said, looking at Evings. “I passed the doctor on the road. He should be here any minute.” Moulton glanced around the room, then his eyes settled again on Evings. “Not much he can do, of course. Everything as you found it?” Moulton had a low, raspy voice and his northern accent turned his as into diphthongs.

“That’s right,” said Bobby. “I’ve been here the whole time.”

Moulton walked to the bed and clumsily knelt down by Evings’s head. Hawthorne could hear the older man’s knees creak. He thought the policeman was going to touch the dead man but Moulton only stared at him. “Rescue squad will take him into Plymouth. An unhappy man,” said the policeman. “I’ll give them a call.”

There was the sound of hurried footsteps on the stairs and the doctor entered. He was a young man in a dark ski jacket. He paused at the threshold to take in the assembled group, walked to the bed, and put the backs of two fingers against the dead man’s neck. He straightened up and pushed a hand through his dark hair, then he pursed his lips.

“Sorry,” he said.

Hawthorne was aware that Bobby was still staring at him angrily. He looked back, not knowing what else to do.

“If you knew how much I hate you,” said Bobby. “I hope they destroy you here.”

“Bobby, stop it,” said Alice. “He didn’t do anything.”

“If it weren’t for him, Clifford wouldn’t be dead.”

“You’re wrong,” said Hawthorne.

Bobby took several steps toward Hawthorne, until he was almost touching him. His wispy goatee seemed to quiver with rage. “You promised him a leave of absence but you never meant it. You found something easier than firing him. You made him kill himself.”

The doctor looked embarrassed. Chief Moulton shut the door, which had been left open. Then he hitched his pants up over his belly. “I’d watch your tongue, young fellow. That kind of talk makes no sense, specially with kids listening on the stairs.”

–

Late that morning Hawthorne was hurrying down the corridor of Emerson Hall when Frank LeBrun called to him from the door of the dining hall. Hawthorne stopped, even though he had seen Hamilton Burke’s red Saab coming up the driveway, splashing through the puddles. LeBrun wore his white jacket and there was a smudge of flour across the bridge of his nose. He kept shrugging his shoulders and stretching his back, as if it were an exercise. He had a grin on his face, but his eyes were pinched so that it seemed more of a grimace. Perhaps that was why Hawthorne stopped, because of the agitation in his eyes.

“Those kids were pretty upset this morning.”

Hawthorne stood still as Frank came up to him. “I’m sure they were.”

“Why d’you think he did it?”

Oddly, it didn’t occur to Hawthorne to think that Evings’s death was no business of LeBrun’s. Again, it was the uncertainty in the man’s eyes.

“He was unhappy and he was frightened.”

“Shit, I been both of those.” LeBrun noticed the flour on his hands and he wiped them on his jeans. “He should of just taken off, that’s what I would have done. Unhappy here, happy someplace else. That’s how it works.”

“You’re stronger than he is.”

“Was,” said LeBrun. “He’s now a was. Nobody shot him or stuck a knife in him or pushed him in the drink. You hear what I’m saying? It was his own choice. These things that frightened him, why didn’t he just say, Fuck it?”

Hawthorne wanted to tell LeBrun to lower his voice but he thought it better to let him talk.

“Poor old fag,” LeBrun continued. “It’s not good to do it to yourself—you got to stick it to the other guy right to the end.”

“I guess he couldn’t do that. He didn’t want to do anything anymore.”

LeBrun rubbed his nose with the back of his hand. “You ever had something you couldn’t do?”

Hawthorne wasn’t sure if they were still talking about Evings. “You mean something I couldn’t face?”

“No, something you couldn’t do. Like you knew that you had to do it but you kept dragging your feet.”

“We all have to do things we don’t like.”

“So if you can’t do it, then what happens?”

“I try to figure out what’s holding me back. Or perhaps it’s something I shouldn’t do in the first place. You have something that’s bothering you?” Not for the first time, Hawthorne wondered what bad stories existed in the other man’s life.

“Nah, I’m fine. Maybe I’m just pissed about Evings. You think it was having his office busted up that made him do it? That’s a real shame. It’s too bad he couldn’t find one fucking reason to keep going.” LeBrun shrugged his shoulders twice and snapped his fingers, then he pointed up the hall. “There’s a guy waiting for you.”

Hawthorne saw Hamilton Burke standing in the rotunda, unbuttoning his dark overcoat. When Hawthorne glanced back, LeBrun was already walking toward the kitchen. He had a jerky stride, as if he weren’t comfortable in his skin. And he was still shrugging his shoulders. Hawthorne felt there had been something childlike about LeBrun’s concern, as if his main worry was his own survival and Evings’s decision to commit suicide had somehow put that survival in jeopardy. As Hawthorne approached Burke, he was struck by the deep crease between Burke’s eyebrows; the lawyer looked like a man who had heard bad news that made him think even less of the human race than before. Burke was stout rather than simply overweight, as though the excess were due to wealth and good living, the result of real estate investments and commercial takeovers, not overeating. He wore a three-piece blue suit under his overcoat. On his feet were rubber galoshes. He pulled off his leather gloves and put them in his overcoat pockets as Hawthorne came up to him.

“You heard about Clifford Evings?” asked Hawthorne.

Burke’s eyebrows went up. “No. What happened?”

“He’s dead. He took pills. They found him this morning. Everyone’s very upset.”

Burke shook his head, then patted his silver hair with one hand, smoothing it down. “What a shame.” He continued to regard Hawthorne with his pale blue eyes.

Hawthorne wondered what accounted for Burke’s expression if it hadn’t been Evings’s death. “The police were here. We’ll have a memorial service later in the week.”

“My office can deal with the police.” The lawyer’s mellifluous baritone had a practiced sound to it. He spoke as if the problem had already been solved.

“Didn’t you see Clifford yesterday?”

“I did. Everything seemed fine. He was delighted about the leave.”

“Had you meant to see him again?” Hawthorne didn’t understand why Burke had driven back up to Bishop’s Hill. They stood in the rotunda looking at each other.

“Actually I wanted to talk to you about some other business.”

The lawyer’s response to Evings’s death seemed so detached that Hawthorne wondered if Burke truly understood that he was dead. Then Hawthorne found himself thinking about finances and building repairs. “What did you want to talk to me about?”

Burke lowered his voice. “I heard that you had a girl in your room Thursday night.”

Now it was Hawthorne’s turn to be surprised. Their voices echoed slightly in the open space.

“A girl came to my apartment late in the evening. She was drunk. I called the nurse and another faculty member. Surely you don’t believe there was any impropriety?”

“I also heard she was naked.”

“Topless,” said Hawthorne. The word came out almost as a bark.

Burke looked at him skeptically. “Perhaps we’d better talk about this in your office.”

They turned down the hall. Burke’s rubber boots squeaked on the marble floor. A few times Hawthorne began to speak, then he remained silent. He was surprised by how he felt, as if he had been caught doing something that he shouldn’t. When they reached the administration office, he held the door open for the other man.

Hilda Skander was watering the plants along the windowsill. Hawthorne wondered how many people had some garbled idea about Thursday night—a naked girl in the headmaster’s rooms.

“Has anyone phoned?” he asked.

Hilda kept her back to him. “Chief Moulton would like you to call him.”

When Hawthorne shut the door of his office, he didn’t even give Burke a chance to sit down. “So what are you accusing me of?”

“I’d rather hear your explanation.”

“There is no explanation. Jessica Weaver came to my apartment. She was drunk and wasn’t wearing a top. She said she wanted to dance for me. I called the nurse and left her a message. Then I called Kate Sandler.”

“Why didn’t you send the girl away?” Burke stood by a table on which there was a stack of brochures about the school.

“As I say, she was drunk. She was unwell. I wanted to find out what’d happened.”

“You should never have let her into your apartment.”

“I suppose I should have called the police.”

“Don’t be ironic with me. This is a serious matter. Lots of people know about it. If it gets to the ears of the county prosecutor, we could be looking at a grand jury investigation.”

Hawthorne walked to his desk. Because of Evings’s death, he had temporarily forgotten about Jessica. Even at the time, Ambrose Stark and the sweet tones of the clarinet playing “Satin Doll” had diminished the shock of her appearance. Alice had taken Jessica to the infirmary and stayed with her. The girl remained there all Friday, hung-over and unhappy. Alice asked where she had gotten the tequila but Jessica refused to say. Saturday afternoon Jessica returned to her room. Hawthorne had seen her in the dining hall over the weekend but hadn’t spoken to her. Several times he had noticed her looking at him, but when he looked back, the girl had turned away. As for the fact that the incident had become general knowledge, Hawthorne wondered who it had come from. He was almost positive that none of the people involved would have spoken of it.

“You’re mistaken,” said Hawthorne, leaning back against his desk, “this is not a serious matter. A girl got drunk and came to my room. I called the nurse and another faculty member. The girl was then taken to the infirmary.”

“People say you had sex with her.” Burke spoke slowly, as if weighing each word.

“That’s preposterous.”

“They say you called the nurse after the girl had already been with you for an hour or more, after you had already had sex with her.” Burke began to remove his overcoat.

“Who says that?”

“The night watchman saw the girl before ten o’clock, an hour before you called the nurse. The Reverend Bennett also saw her going toward your quarters around that time.”

“Then why didn’t she do something?”

“She didn’t realize that the girl was going to you.”

“Even if she was naked?”

“She wasn’t naked then.” Burke held his coat over his arm.

“What does the girl herself say?”

“I’m told she can’t remember.”

“Can’t remember having sex?”

“That’s what I gather.” Burke spoke less certainly.

“Who else has been making accusations?”

Burke laid his overcoat on the arm of the couch and sat down. “They’re worried about their jobs. They feel if they accuse you, then you’ll fire them.”